Five UALR students have been selected by the Rotary Club of Little Rock to receive annual scholarship awards.

“Today’s students are tomorrow’s business and professional leaders,” said Dr. Charles Donaldson, UALR Vice Chancellor for Educational and Student Services. “At UALR, these promising students will find the highest quality educational experience and enjoy the many benefits of studying in the state’s capital.”

Here are UALR’s Rotary scholars:

• Kevin McCollum, a North Little Rock High School graduate who earned an associate degree at Pulaski Tech with a Presidential Scholarship, advances to UALR to study business management. He received the Eugene M. Pfeifer, Jr. Rotary Scholarship
• Jeff Harris won the James H. Fribourgh Rotary Club 99 Scholarship. He served for five years in the Air Force in Iraq before enrolling at UALR. With a 4.0 grade point average (GPA), this biology major has aspirations of attending UAMS after graduation. His interest is in cancer research.
• Keith Nichols, a veteran of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division prior to his 22-year career with the Little Rock Police Department, is an instructor at the Little Rock Police Academy. He won the Louie Caudell Rotary Club of Little Rock Scholarship. As a criminal justice major with a 3.0 GPA, Nichols plans to teach and coach high school students upon completion of his degree and retirement from LRPD.
• Ben Diggins, a graduate of Benton High School, where he played varsity sports and he and friends won first place in an electric vehicle competition in Little Rock, won the Charles Hathaway College of Engineering and Information Technology Rotary Club Scholarship. The full-time sophomore mechanical engineering student is working with another team on the Baja Buggy design competition for the Society of Automobile Engineers competition this summer.
• Justin McEntire, a native of Hardy and a graduate of Highland High School, won the Virginia Bailey Little Rock Rotary Club Entrepreneurial Education Scholarship. Helping his family operate a franchise sandwich shop in Ash Flat inspired McEntire to pursue a degree in business management with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and small business management. Currently he is participating in the 2009 Arkansas Governor’s Cub Business Plan Competition and after graduation, plans to pursue an MBA at UALR.